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In A 100 Years
Jan. 11th, 2012 01:51 pmThere's quite a fascinating article that's been making the rounds recently, which was written by an American called John Elfreth Watkins (Junior) in 1900 and was published in the Ladies' Home Journal. In it, he makes predictions as to what the world would be like in a hundred years' time, leaving out only the possibility that people would have slightly shorter names - there's a complete scan of the original article here.
As is usual for things like these, a lot of his predictions turned out to be remarkably correct but in wrong ways in the details because he couldn't predict so far beyond the technology of the time - the concept of air conditioning is described installed as "hot and cold faucets". The way he talks about photographs being transmitted instantly across the world, video and sound being sent through a "giant telephone apparatus", and messages being delivered automatically to homes all came true in a single package that we know as the Internet - something which, in another uncanny indicator of being so far ahead of his time, he referred to as a series of tubes.
He got other things right through being just vague enough for them to match up perfectly with the way that they were actually done, describing what we know as X-rays as "rays of invisible light". Complex technologies like hydroponics are touched on with the mention of "vegetables grown by electricity", and he also predicted their distribution around the world in "fast-flying refrigerators", which makes it sound slightly like he envisioned loading up a Hotpoint, putting it into a trebuchet and flinging it in the direction of the nearest Tesco.
He couldn't get everything right - one of the more far-fetched predictions was that the letters C, X and Q would be discarded as no longer necessary. As we all know, the reality is that all words except "OMG", "LOL" and "WTF" have been discarded as unnecessary, with all instant communication expressed through these in various arrangements, repetition and intensity. He mentions the development of flight - which was still a decade away at the time the article was written - but he doesn't go far enough with it. He believed that it wouldn't catch on commercially, and that journeys between America and Britain would take a day and a half - an absolutely unheard-of feat in 1900, but which we would now think of as unacceptably slow. He also mentioned battle tanks that would travel as fast as trains - which is correct in a way, as British Rail's trains are well known for almost achieving the speed of tanks.
It's also interesting to read through the subtext of the predictions that any possibility of social change seemed to be ignored - he mentions that having one's own cook would be regarded as unusual, and while that's now true, it's not for the reasons that he predicted it would be. It also seems unusually short-sighted for him to predict all of these devices of convenience and then go on to say that exercise will be held as so highly important, with humans able to walk ten miles without difficulty. Ten feet through to the fridge to get one of his "ready-cooked meals" would now seem like a stretch sometimes.
After having been reminded of what the world of 1900 didn't have, it's rather fitting to think that this electronic copy of the article is now being transmitted all over the world through a technology that he tried to imagine. Although curiously, he didn't seem to apply his video predictions to, quite simply, books.
As is usual for things like these, a lot of his predictions turned out to be remarkably correct but in wrong ways in the details because he couldn't predict so far beyond the technology of the time - the concept of air conditioning is described installed as "hot and cold faucets". The way he talks about photographs being transmitted instantly across the world, video and sound being sent through a "giant telephone apparatus", and messages being delivered automatically to homes all came true in a single package that we know as the Internet - something which, in another uncanny indicator of being so far ahead of his time, he referred to as a series of tubes.
He got other things right through being just vague enough for them to match up perfectly with the way that they were actually done, describing what we know as X-rays as "rays of invisible light". Complex technologies like hydroponics are touched on with the mention of "vegetables grown by electricity", and he also predicted their distribution around the world in "fast-flying refrigerators", which makes it sound slightly like he envisioned loading up a Hotpoint, putting it into a trebuchet and flinging it in the direction of the nearest Tesco.
He couldn't get everything right - one of the more far-fetched predictions was that the letters C, X and Q would be discarded as no longer necessary. As we all know, the reality is that all words except "OMG", "LOL" and "WTF" have been discarded as unnecessary, with all instant communication expressed through these in various arrangements, repetition and intensity. He mentions the development of flight - which was still a decade away at the time the article was written - but he doesn't go far enough with it. He believed that it wouldn't catch on commercially, and that journeys between America and Britain would take a day and a half - an absolutely unheard-of feat in 1900, but which we would now think of as unacceptably slow. He also mentioned battle tanks that would travel as fast as trains - which is correct in a way, as British Rail's trains are well known for almost achieving the speed of tanks.
It's also interesting to read through the subtext of the predictions that any possibility of social change seemed to be ignored - he mentions that having one's own cook would be regarded as unusual, and while that's now true, it's not for the reasons that he predicted it would be. It also seems unusually short-sighted for him to predict all of these devices of convenience and then go on to say that exercise will be held as so highly important, with humans able to walk ten miles without difficulty. Ten feet through to the fridge to get one of his "ready-cooked meals" would now seem like a stretch sometimes.
After having been reminded of what the world of 1900 didn't have, it's rather fitting to think that this electronic copy of the article is now being transmitted all over the world through a technology that he tried to imagine. Although curiously, he didn't seem to apply his video predictions to, quite simply, books.
